


je suis de retour

by Dressed_In_Darkness



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Related, Canon Universe, F/M, Female Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), If you don't read the manga you won't understand the ending, My own interpretation of Levi, One Shot, POV Eren Yeager, POV First Person, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 05:10:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13334175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dressed_In_Darkness/pseuds/Dressed_In_Darkness
Summary: Eren wanted one night away from everything--no thinking, no worrying, no wondering how this war will end. He ends up in the Underground, drunk and alone behind a renown tavern, until a woman finds him and takes him home.





	je suis de retour

**Author's Note:**

> What are summaries? What are one shots?  
> I struggle with one shots. I swear I could have written an entire multi-chaptered fan fiction for this idea. It was so hard to stop, but I hope some people enjoy reading this. ^^

_“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around."_

_\- Bob Marley_

 

 

* * *

 

 

The woman found me slumped against a dumpster behind The Three Walls tavern. I’d been there for some time when she stumbled upon me, too drunk to stand and too stubborn to ask anyone for help. She approached me with some hesitation, slow and cautious as she set aside her bag of groceries on the ground. She knelt between my outstretched legs and tipped my head back to inspect my face. Her nose wrinkled in disgust when the stench of stale beer reached her. I welcomed the clean scent of her, that of fresh linen and honeysuckle soap.

     “Can you walk?” she asked.

     I shook my head.

     “You’re going to have to try. It isn’t safe to stay here overnight.” She grabbed my arm and draped it over her neck. It took some effort, but she managed to get me to my feet. “My house isn’t far from here. You can stay there until morning.”

     She gave me no time to respond. She stooped to wrap her arm around the paper bag she’d set aside, then ushered me out of the damp alleyway. We stopped several times on the way to her home. She was much shorter than me and bearing most of my weight threw her off balance, but she was quick to recover. “We’re almost there,” she said, as much to herself as it was to me. Her grasp around my waist tightened as I staggered to the side. “Don’t collapse on me now.”

     “Far from it.” A lie. With every step, I grew dizzier, the cobblestone road shifting out of focus. I blinked until my vision cleared.

     “Just around the corner. Stay with me.”

     It was freezing out, the kind of cold that pierced through my heaviest coat like a knife. She no doubt regretted helping a drunk on a night such as this one. The only thing she wore to ward off the brittle wind was a hooded wool coat. It wasn’t enough. I could feel her trembling.

     “Hey,” she said in a sharp voice that drew my attention to her. “There are stairs leading to the door. You think you can make it up them without knocking us both down?”

     I focused my gaze on the staircase I hadn’t noticed a moment ago. It was a long way up. “I’ll manage.”

     She tightened her hold on me as we climbed the first couple steps. I swayed, nauseous from the movement, and reached out a hand to grab onto the railing. I steadied myself. “Better?” she asked after a moment passed.         

     “No, but let’s go on.”

     By some miracle, we made it up the stairs in one piece. The woman leaned me against the wall while she unlocked the door. Then she led me inside her small home, where she directed me toward a dining chair in the kitchenette. I sat and hung my head between my knees.

     “You’re filthy,” she said, setting the bag down on the counter.

     “That I am.”

     “I can run you a bath, but the water will be cold. It always is this time of night.”

     I lifted my head. For the first time I noticed her striking face. Her eyes were sharp and angled, and she had a small pink mouth. “Are you giving me a choice?”

     “No,” she admitted. “You reek of alcohol.”

     “Then give me a minute. I don’t think I can get up right now.”

     She unpacked the groceries while I fought off the urge to be sick all over her floor. She hadn’t bought much from the market square: a bottle of milk, brown eggs, tangerines, a loaf of rye bread, salmon, and a box of black tea. It was more than most people could afford down here in the Underground City. I’d seen people go days with nothing more than old bread and hard cheese they’d found in the dump. That told me she either had a well-paying job—something that was hard to come by in the Underground—or knew someone in the capital.

     “Here, stand up,” she instructed after she put everything away.

     I stood on legs that threatened to buckle under my weight, my eyes darting down as she began to undo the top buttons of my shirt. I put my hands over hers and held them in place. They were small in comparison to mine, but much softer. “I can do it on my own.”

     “It’ll take longer that way, you clumsy drunk.” She tilted her head back to gaze at me. “Does this make you uncomfortable?”

     “It does. You’re a beautiful woman, and I don’t know how I’ll react to you undressing me. I wouldn’t want you to think I have bad intentions.”

     She smiled and resumed unbuttoning my shirt. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll keep you in check.”

     I looked away from her as she pushed my shirt and coat over my shoulders. They slid down my arms and fell to the floor. “What’s your name?”

     “Levi. Yours?”

     “Eren,” I said, shivering when her fingers brushed over my stomach.

     “Do you always get drunk like this, Eren?”

     “Not usually. Only on bad days.”

     She worked open my belt. “Well, some advice: You should steer clear of that tavern you went to tonight. People take advantage of drunks there. They’ll rob you blind.”

     “Luckily I have nothing for them to take.”

     She shook her head. “Come. The washroom is this way.”

     Levi guided me down a short hallway that led to a room dominated by a copper tub. She made quick work of filling it, adding a vial of fragrance oil to the water. I stood back and waited for her to finish, enjoying the pleasant scent of ripe plum and vanilla bean.

     “Are you going to bathe in your pants?” she asked, turning to me as she slung a washcloth over the side of the tub.

     In answer to her question, I undressed fully, setting my belongings next to a standalone sink. I stepped into the tub without meeting her eyes and shivered, the hair on my arms rising with goosebumps. The water was much colder than expected. It took me a while to lower myself into that coldness. When I was submerged to the shoulders, teeth chattering, I reached for the washcloth, but Levi picked it up and moved it to where I couldn’t reach.

     “Let me,” she said. She took up the cloth in one hand, and a bar of soap in the other. I watched her scrub the soap against the cloth, then, sure in her movements, she began to wash my back. “When’s the last time you bathed?”

     “Three days ago.”

     “How foul.”

     “I had other things on my mind.”

     “Things that led you to drink, apparently.” She grabbed a wooden bucket she kept beside the tub. She dipped it in the water and filled it halfway. “Tilt your head forward. Your hair is a mess.”

     I dropped my head with some reluctance, clenching my teeth when she poured the water over me all at once. Afterwards, she took on the task of washing my hair as though it were her job, scrubbing it clean with tea tree oil, then combing out all the snags. By the time she rinsed it out, I was shaking hard. The water felt like ice jabbing at me, but I never once complained. Levi had taken me into her home when no one else would have. I was grateful for that. Spending a night alone in the back alley of a tavern could have led to unwanted problems.

     “Wash your body,” she said as she put the washcloth into my hand. “My uncle left some of his clothes here. I’m going to get you something to sleep in.”

     My fingers had gone numb minutes ago. It made it hard to keep hold of the washcloth, but I did my best to wash off the grime of the past three days. I’d almost finished when Levi returned with clean clothes in hand. She placed them on the sink, and then grabbed a couple of towels from a shelf overhead.

     “Let’s get you out of there before you freeze.” She came over to the tub and waited for me to get to my feet. I did so slowly, dripping and shivering, even after she wrapped one of the towels around my shoulders. She used the other towel to dry my hair. Then she helped me out of the water and took me into the next room, where she had a fire going in a pellet stove. I stepped closer to it, seeking out the heat of the flames. “You look like a drowned rat,” she commented while she rubbed some warmth back into my arms, “but you smell a lot better. I’ll give you that.”

     I laughed. “I think you might have ruined the better parts of me.”

     “Better parts, you say?” Her eyes dropped to my lower half. She raised an eyebrow. “I think it’ll work just fine after we get you into some clothes.”

     The clothes she offered me were just the right size. I hurriedly put on the white button-down and black jeans, eager to be dressed.

     “Where should I sleep?” I asked when I noticed she’d taken me into her bedroom.

     “Where else? The bed.”

     I gaped at her. “The bed?”

     “Yes. There’s no couch.”      

     “The floor, then.”

     “Nonsense,” she said. “This room is drafty. You’ll catch a cold sleeping on the floor, and the reason I brought you here is so that you wouldn’t freeze.” She gestured to the mattress, which seemed too small to hold the both of us. “So, the bed. I trust you to behave yourself.”

     “I—yes.”

     “Glad to hear it.” She gathered up the wet towels and left the room without another word. When she returned, she was in a grey chemise that left nothing to the imagination. I swallowed, throat suddenly bone dry, and forced myself to look away. I heard her crawl into bed, and then she said, in warning, “Don’t mistake this for an invitation. If you try anything, I’ll break both your hands. Is that understood?”

     “Yes.”

     “Then get in bed. It’s late, and I’m tired.”

     I didn’t budge. I stood there with my fists clenched tight, taking deep, uneven breaths in a futile attempt to settle the erratic beating of my heart. When I finally found the nerve to climb into bed with her, I slid under the covers and stuck to the edge of the mattress to keep a good distance between us. That way I could avoid any temptation. But I never expected her to roll toward me and tug on the back of my shirt. I wanted to ignore her, had every intention to, but then I found myself turning my head to peer at her over my shoulder.

     “Are you that shy?” she asked when our eyes met.

     “Shy? No. I’m trying to be a gentleman.”

     “Well”—she moved closer, until her breasts were pressed against my back—“you’re going to have to try harder, because I want to sleep like this. You’re very warm.”   

     “And you’re greatly overestimating my self-control.”

     Instead of being frightened, Levi snorted. “I thought I ruined the better parts of you?”

     “Apparently not.”

     “Mm, then let’s take your mind off it. How about you tell me a little about yourself? How did you end up drinking yourself stupid tonight?” That wasn’t something I wanted to discuss with anyone, let alone a stranger. Especially when I’d spent half the night trying to _forget_ the things that led me to a notorious tavern underground. She must have sensed my uneasiness, because she nudged my shoulder with her head and said, “Never mind that. I shouldn’t have asked. How about you ask me a question instead?”

     “Is it a habit of yours to pick up drunks you find behind taverns?”

     “No, not at all. But normally the drunks I come across are old idiots who get plastered every chance they get. I’ve never seen you in that area before, and you’re very young—too young to leave in an alley.”

     I turned toward her. “I’m nineteen.”

     “You say that like nineteen is old.”

     “Well... How old are you?”

     “Twenty-two,” she said.

     “You’re not much older than me.”

     “Never said I was.” She reached up and flicked my forehead. “Why did you grow your hair out so long? It was a hassle to wash.”

     I shrugged. “No reason.”

     “I like it.” She said this while she combed her fingers through it, starting at the front and working her way back to my nape. It made me painfully aware of how close she was.

     “I thought you said it was a hassle?”

     “It is, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like it. I wonder what your parents think of it, though.”

     “I wouldn’t know,” I said, pushing my head into her hand like a cat. “They both died a long time ago.”

     I expected her to pity me, to blurt out an apology like everyone else did, but she only said, “Mine too. Now let’s sleep. We both had a long night.” She pulled the cover over our heads and tucked her head under my chin. I lay there listening to the crackle of the fire for a long time. Just as I was nodding off, she asked, in a small voice, “Are you lonely, Eren?”

     “Yes, for a long time now.”

     “Me too.”

 

\---

 

The next morning, I woke to an empty house and a note.

_Went into work. Leave when you’re feeling up to it. There’s some food for you in the fridge, and something to drink on the counter._

_\- Levi_

     There were two egg sandwiches wrapped in paper on the top shelf of the fridge, and on the counter, a thermos of coffee sweetened with honey. I ate the food Levi prepared for me at the round dining table. It tasted better than anything I’d eaten in a while. I couldn’t figure out why. It wasn’t anything special, but then it hit me: She’d made this just for me. The last person who’d made a meal for me was my mother, and that had been so long ago—too long ago.

     “Thank you,” I whispered, even when Levi wasn’t here to hear me, and for the first time in months, it felt like my troubles were miles away.

 

\---

 

I returned to the underground a week later, with a bagful of fresh ingredients and a bouquet of Calla lilies. I wanted to repay Levi for the kindness she’d shown me. I also couldn’t get her off my mind. Whenever I went to sleep at night, I remembered how it felt to have her next to me, her arm wrapped around my waist and her cheek pressed to my chest. I wanted to see her again, quite desperately.

     It took me more than an hour to find her house from The Three Walls tavern. I blamed that on my sobriety. Everything looked different now that I wasn’t drunk. By the time I reached the cement staircase, which was much shorter than I remembered it being, nerves had worked my stomach into knots. My palms were clammy as I climbed the steps to the front door. Why was I so nervous? I came here to thank her for her consideration. I planned to make her dinner, and give her flowers, yet... In the back of my mind, I kept hearing her tell me she was lonely. Her voice had been so sad.

     Putting that thought aside, I knocked on the door. No one answered. I tried one more time, but it was obvious that no one was home.

     Disappointed, I went and sat on the stairs, setting the bag on the step below me. I wasn’t sure how long I should wait for her. She’d been out late when she came across me at the tavern.

     “You came back.”

     Startled, my eyes darted down, and there at the foot of the stairs stood Levi in a floor length dress. Her bangs were pinned back, which gave me a perfect view of her face. I sat there without saying a word, unable to, struck dumb by the sight of her.

     “Are you deaf?” she said with a smile as she walked up the stairs.

     I shot to my feet. “Uh, no... sorry. You just surprised me.”

     “What’s in the bag?”

     “Food.”

     “And the flowers?”

     “They’re for you,” I said, thrusting them out when she reached the top of the stairs.

     She took the bouquet from me and lifted it to her nose. Her smile widened. “They’re lovely. Thank you.” She stepped passed me. “Come inside. I’ll make us some tea.”

     I followed her into the house. We strode through the front room to the kitchenette, where she instructed me to sit at the dining table. I took the same seat I’d sat in the last time and watched her fill an iron kettle with water. After she put it on the stove to boil, she searched through her cabinets until she found a vase stashed behind several pots. The smile that lit up her face when she put the flowers in it made my stomach flutter. 

     “Is that it?” she asked. “No one has ever given me flowers before, and they don’t grow down here. I don’t know how to take care of them.”

     I rummaged through the bag I’d brought and produced potting mix. “Do you have a pot?”

     “No.” Her face fell.

     “It’s fine,” I said in a hurry. “The vase should work fine, but if they don’t hold up in there, I’ll bring you more.”

     “You will?”

     I looked at her. She was so beautiful. “Yes. As many times as you’d like.”

     “Can you bring me a different kind every time you come?”

     “If that’ll make you happy.”

     “It will,” she confirmed.

     We worked together, pouring the potting mix into the vase and filling it with water until the mix was moist. By the time we were finished, and the vase was put on the window sill next to several candleholders, the kettle was whistling.

     “Sit, sit,” Levi said, excited. “My boss gifted me some rare tea leaves. I’ve been wanting to try it all day.”

     “Do you like tea?”

     Her smile turned bashful. “Yes, very much.”

     “What’s your favorite?”

     “Black tea.”

     I made a mental note to bring her black tea the next time I came.

     She brought out a glass teapot and spooned tea leaves into it from a jar. Then she poured the hot water over them in a slow circle. “We’ll let it steep for three minutes,” she said when she was done, putting the lid on. She reached for the paper bag I’d left on the table and looked inside. “You brought a lot. Do you want me to cook for you?”

     “No! No. I wanted to cook for you, to show you how thankful I am for what you did for me last week.”

     “Oh. Well, the kitchen is all yours.”

     I unpacked the groceries on the counter and set to work. I felt less awkward once my hands were busy. I seasoned the duck with salt and pepper, scored the breast, then fried it in butter, thyme, and star anise. When it’d been frying for twelve minutes, I transferred it to the oven and started on the Winter Squash soup. All the while, I could feel Levi’s eyes on me. I looked over my shoulder to check and caught her watching me, but she didn’t turn away when our eyes met, only smiled. That smile turned my stomach into a heap of butterflies.

     “It smells amazing,” she said, coming to stand beside me as I stirred the soup. “Do you cook often?”

     “Yes, but not like this. Normally it’s something much simpler.” Like bean soup and baked potatoes.

     She leaned in close, the smell of honeysuckle filling my nose. “So, this is something special? For me?”

     Not trusting my voice, I nodded.

     “Here, try this.” She brought a cup to my mouth. I took a sip of tea. It tasted richer than any tea I’d had back at home. “Good?”

     “Yes.”

     “You’re not lying to me, are you?”     

     “No, give me another sip.”

     Forty minutes later, when the soup was finished cooking, we sat around the dining table with the food spread out before us on various dishes. Levi popped open a bottle of rosé wine she saved for special occasions and poured a heaping amount into two tall glasses while I served us some of the soup. She glanced down at the bowl and said, “This all looks so good. I can’t wait to try it. I’ve never eaten something like this before.” She smiled at me. “Tell me what everything is.”

     “Hmm, well, this here is roasted duck breast with plum sauce. And what you’re about to eat is squash soup.”

     She tried it, slow and careful, as though she didn’t know what to expect. Her eyes widened a fraction. “It’s delicious.”

     I sagged in relief. “I’m glad it turned out all right.”

     She nodded without looking up, eating happily. Soon enough, both of us were enjoying the meal and talking among ourselves. “Do you live in the capital, up there?” she asked, pointing to the ceiling.

     “Me? No. I live in the Stohess District.”

     “It must be nice. I’ve lived in the Underground all my life.”

     I didn’t enjoy living in Stohess anymore than she enjoyed living here, but I could see the appeal. In the Underground, the sun never shone and people turned to crime to obtain the essentials to live. Many of them had no other choice. If they didn’t steal, they would starve. It was their means of survival. “You can come visit me,” I told her, taking a sip of wine.

     “Is that even possible? I thought I needed to become a citizen before I’d be permitted to go to the surface.”

     “I can make it possible.”

     Levi left it at that. I wondered if she thought I was lying to her. People who lived here in the Underground never saw the light of day, not without a price. Then again, most of them hadn’t met someone who was close to the queen. I could get Levi to the surface. One day I’d prove that to her. But tonight, we feasted on buttery duck and drank too much wine. “Oh, I have apple cake,” Levi announced suddenly. She stood too fast and had to grab the table for support. She was a little drunk. Her cheeks were flushed with it. “We need dessert after a meal like that.”

     “Do you want some help?”

     “No, no, you sit. I’ll do it.” It took her a moment to steady herself, then she went to the fridge. The apple cake she brought over was frosted with sugar and topped with a fine dusting of cinnamon. She set it on the table. “I may have overdone it on the frosting.”

     “It looks good.”

     She swayed on her feet. When I steadied her by putting my hand on her waist, she said, “Don’t move your hand. I wouldn’t want to fall.”

     I smiled. “I won’t let you fall.”

     “Do you think you can cut it? I overdid it on the wine, too. I don’t think I can handle a knife without butchering the cake.”

     “Go ahead and sit. I got it covered.” I cut us each a slice, and under Levi’s instruction, carried them out to the stairs. We ate on the top step in the cold night. The cake was good, rich and smooth and not too sweet. When we had our fill, we lay back on the cold cement and gazed up at the darkness. The sky was blocked from view, nothing but rock and dirt, a cell that held hundreds of captives that yearned for freedom as much as I did. “I mean it,” I heard myself say, “you can come and visit me.”

     She turned toward me, propping her head up on her hand. “You have that kind of power?”

     “More like I know the right people.”

     We lay there in silence for some time. I thought Levi had fallen asleep, but then she spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. “You will come back, won’t you?”

     I reached out, careful, so careful, and touched the side of her face. “Yes.”

    

\---

 

And I did come back, many, many times, each time with a different set of flowers.

 

\---

 

Levi and I sat under the shade of an orange tree on a warm September afternoon. We had just finished picking Valencia oranges and were now peeling them in heaps. She was determined to eat as many as she could.

     Five months had passed since she’d scooped me up from behind The Three Walls tavern. I’d gone to see her countless times since then, but even now, I wasn’t sure what kind of relationship we had. Some days she treated me as nothing more than a friend, and others she looked at me with such passion in her eyes that it made me ache. I didn’t know what to make of any of it, but today was not a day to bring it up. It was her first time on the surface.

     It had taken some convincing, but Historia had finally granted Levi citizenship. I think she was more surprised that I was interested in someone than the favor I’d asked of her.

     Levi suddenly lay back, resting her head in my lap. “The sun’s so warm.” She closed her eyes and turned her face toward it. She hummed in approval. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it.”

     “We can stay out here for another few hours. There’s no hurry,” I said.

     She shook her head as she popped a piece of orange into her mouth. “I want to see where you live. You promised you’d show me.”

     “It will still be there after dark.”

     She shook her head again. “We’ll leave once we finish eating all these oranges.”

     “Okay.”

     Our hands were a sticky mess by the time we ate the last one. We washed up in the creek that ran beside the grove, then headed to the barracks. I couldn’t understand why she wanted to see my room. It was small and plain, empty of anything meaningful, but I couldn’t deny her this. She’d been asking to see it all day.

     When the building that housed my room came into view, Levi took my hand and tugged me forward, too impatient to keep to a slow pace. We passed several of my comrades along the way: Connie, Jean, Sasha, and Armin. They acknowledged our presence with a curt nod. War had changed them, just as it had changed me. Our hearts had hardened from the things we’d experienced. Or at least that’s what I had once believed. Meeting Levi proved that I still had room for hope, for love; that I could still feel emotions I thought had died long ago.

     “This is it,” I said, stopping in front of a heavy wooden door.

     “Open it,” she urged.

     I unlocked the door, pushed it open, and let her enter first. My room looked like it always did: bare, except for a bed and a nightstand.

     “Where are your things?” she asked as I stepped inside. She glanced around, noting the bare walls and lack of furniture. Her eyes returned to me as I closed the door behind me.

     A storage chest in the corner of the room held any valuables that mattered to me, like the bronze key my father had given me when I was a boy, and the picture of him we’d found in the basement of my old home. I pointed the chest out to her now, and watched her eyes flick over to it. “I don’t have much, but the things I do have are kept in there,” I said, waiting for disappointment to cloud her expression. It never did. She sat on the bed with a grin on her face, as if she were pleased with what she saw. That caught me by surprise. “What’s with that grin? This can’t be what you expected.”

     “But it is. I knew it would be like this. You don’t hold onto anything. You’ve been through too much. You’ve _seen_ too much.”

     “I hold onto you,” I admitted.

     The grin turned into something shy. “I know.”

     “Uh...” I looked away. “Now that you’ve seen my room, do you want to go back out?”    

     “No, not yet. Come sit with me for a while.”

     Nerves made me stay put. I’d been alone with her many times before, but this felt different somehow. I was too aware of the way the fabric of her yellow sundress molded to the curves of her body; too aware of the way she was looking at me. If I went to her now, would I be able to control myself? “Levi,” I began in warning, but she silenced me with a subtle shake of her head.

     “Come here, Eren.”

     I went to her then, and sat beside her on the bed. “Why did you want to come to my room?”

     “To be alone with you.”

     “Levi... There are things I haven’t told you. Things you should know.”

     “I already know,” she said, reaching out to cup my face with her hands. “I know everything.”  
     I leaned my forehead against hers, closing my eyes as her fingers slid into my hair. “You know what I am and you...accept that? How can that be? I’m a monster.”

     She kissed my neck, the underside of my chin, the patch of skin beneath my bottom lip, then, finally, my mouth. She tasted of oranges. “You’re not a monster,” she whispered with her lips hovering over mine. “Look at me, Eren.” I lifted my eyes to hers. “You may be able to change into a titan, but you’re not a monster. At least not in the way that you think you are. You’re good. You’re just...broken. But so am I.”

     “I love you,” I said as I tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

     “I know that too.” Levi turned her head to kiss my palm. Then, reaching down to the hem of her dress, she pulled it over her head and dropped it to the floor without a care. In the dim afternoon light, she sat before me in nothing but a pair of white cotton panties. I looked her over, hands shaking where they lay in my lap until she grabbed one and brought it to her breast. My thumb brushed over her nipple and the sound she made sent a flash of heat racing across my skin. “Touch me, Eren.”

     Thoughts vanished. I drew her to me, careful, and eased her back onto the bed. Her breath hitched in her throat as my lips skimmed over her stomach and down toward the waistband of her underwear. I wanted to taste her. God, I wanted to taste her so badly. Fueled by desire, I licked her through her panties. She tangled her fingers in my hair and arched up into my mouth, gasping.

     I wanted to be gentle, to take my time and please her, but I was shaking with the need to be inside her.

     “Don’t worry about anything,” said Levi, as though she heard my thoughts. She stroked the side of my face. “Just make love to me, however you want to. Many, many times.”

     I leaned up and kissed her, and made love to her until I couldn’t tell where she ended and I began.

 

\---

 

Hours later, we lay side by side in comfortable silence.

     Levi propped herself up on her elbows and looked over at me. “Will you come back?”

     I understood what she meant to ask with that question. She was the only person I’d told about my plan to go into enemy territory alone, disguised as a wounded soldier.

     “Yes,” I said, even when I couldn’t be sure.

     “Come back,” she ordered.     

     I turned, reached for her, and pulled her close. “I’ll come back.”

 

\---

 

As I was falling asleep, Levi leaned over me and whispered, pained, “I love you, Eren Yeager. No matter what, come back.”

 

\---

 

Levi

 

Today was not much different from all the other days. I got up at dawn, showered, ate breakfast, and sat alone in the kitchen, wondering if Eren would come back home today.

     He’d been gone for eight months now.

     I rubbed my belly. It loomed before me, heavy and round. “He’ll come back to us,” I told our unborn child. “I know he will.”

     I stood and gathered the dishes I’d used. When I set them in the sink, something caught my eye. I gazed out the window and there, on top of the brick fence post, lay a bouquet of Calla lilies.  

**Author's Note:**

> HE CAME BACK TO HER, DON'T TALK TO ME  
> This started out as a one shot for someone else, but then it became a bit self-indulgent at the end. I wanted Eren to have someone waiting for him to return (He obviously has his friends/comrades, but that's not what I'm talking about here). I wanted him to WANT to survive and return home, because in the manga he seems so damn sad and it hurts me terribly. JUST... I love him. I need him to be okay.
> 
> The ending won't make much sense if you haven't kept up with the manga, but I wrote this for someone who is up to date, so I thought that was okay. *sweats*
> 
> Anywho, I hope you enjoyed reading it. :)


End file.
